Author: Walt Davis
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1603441530
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305
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Book Description
In 1955, Frank X. Tolbert, a well-known columnist for the Dallas Morning News, circumnavigated Texas with his nine-year-old-son in a Willis Jeep. The column he phoned in to the newspaper about his adventures, "Tolbert's Texas," was a staple of Walt Davis's childhood. Fifty years later, Walt and his wife, Isabel, have re-explored portions of Tolbert’s trek along the boundaries of Texas. The border of Texas is longer than the Amazon River, running through ten distinct ecological zones as it outlines one of the most familiar shapes in geography. According to the Davises, "Driving its every twist and turn would be like driving from Miami to Los Angeles by way of New York." Each of this book’s sixteen chapters opens with an original drawing by Walt, representing a segment of the Texas border where the authors selected a special place—a national park, a stretch of river, a mountain range, or an archeological site. Using a firsthand account of that place written by a previous visitor (artist, explorer, naturalist, or archeologist), they then identified a contemporary voice (whether biologist, rancher, river-runner, or paleontologist) to serve as a modern-day guide for their journey of rediscovery. This dual perspective allows the authors to attach personal stories to the places they visited, to connect the past with the present, and to compare Texas then with Texas now. Whether retracing botanist Charles Wright's 600-mile walk to El Paso in 1849 or paddling Houston's Buffalo Bayou, where John James Audubon saw ivory-billed woodpeckers in 1837, the Davises seek to remind readers that passionate and determined people wrote the state's natural history. Anyone interested in Texas or its rich natural heritage will find deep enjoyment in Exploring the Edges of Texas. Publication of this book is generously supported by a memorial gift in honor of Mary Frances "Chan" Driscoll, a founding member of the Advisory Council of Texas A&M University Press, by her sons Henry B. Paup '70 and T. Edgar Paup '74.
Author: Isabel Davis
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1603443061
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 306
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Book Description
The ultimate road trip, celebrating the remarkable history, natural history and diversity of the Lone Star State.~Robert McCracken Peck, The Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia.
Author: Walt Davis
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1623494427
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 238
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Book Description
Recounted through the eyes of a major participant, this book tells the story of the Dallas Museum of Natural History from its beginning in 1922 as a collection of specimens celebrating the plants and animals of Texas to its metamorphosis in 2012 as the gleaming Perot Museum of Nature and Science. The life of this museum was indelibly influenced by a colorful staff of scientists, administrators, and teachers, including a German taxidermist, a South American explorer, and a Milwaukee artist, each with a compelling personal investment in this museum and its mission. From the days when meticulously and skillfully prepared dioramas were the hallmark of natural history museums to the era of blockbuster exhibits and interactive education, Walt Davis traces the changing expectations of and demands on museums, both public and private, through an engaging, personal look back at the creation and development of one exceptional institution, whose building and original exhibits are now protected as historical landmarks at Fair Park in Dallas.
Author: John Miller Morris
Publisher: Texas State Historical Assn
ISBN: 9780876111956
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
El Llano Estacado, a major new work of Western History, reveals the historical heart of one of the world's unique regions--the enormous mesaland of the Southern High Plains in Texas and New Mexico. From the Canadian River in the north to the Edwards Plateau in the south, from the Pecos River in the west to the fantastic canyonlands of the Red, Pease, Brazos, and Colorado Rivers in the east, the 50,000 square miles of "the Llano" are chronicled over three centuries with an eye to the history and compelling mystery of this special land. Armchair detectives will especially relish the comprehensive discussion of the lost--now possibly rediscovered--Coronado expedition route across the plains. This story of the legendary Llano Estacado from 1536 to 1860 informs our understanding of discovery and geography in the Southwest. El Llano Estacado is more than a good read; it is also a native son's meditation on the role of imagination and myth in how we perceive this unique environment. From the dawn of historic contact with the Southern High Plains, a remarkable series of Spanish, French, Mexican, and Anglo-American explorers and adventurers attempted to make sense of its curious environment. "Lo Llano," the first part of this saga, is a detective story on the Lost Coronado Trail. The key to this ancient Southwest mystery--where did the Spanish go in Texas in 1541?--is understanding what they saw and how they remembered it in their writings. Part Two, "The Llano Frontier," studies the three centuries of Spanish exploration and imagination following Coronado. "The Illimitable Prairie," part three of the study, analyzes the romantic discovery of the Llano in the Anglo imagination. In the final part, "The Great Zahara," the author rides the trail of the classic Anglo explorers of the Llano: James W. Abert, Randolph Marcy, John Pope, and others. The visual representations of the Llano are also revealed through numerous illustrations of rare maps and lithographs. El Llano Estacado is a grand history and geography told in an imaginative, interdisciplinary style befitting a high land. The mysteries and mirages of this great Southwestern landscape are the stuff of adventurers' quests and now readers' dreams.
Author: Lonn Taylor
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 0875657206
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 301
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Book Description
Turning the Pages of Texas is a collection of sixty essays about Texas books, authors, book collectors, libraries, and bookstores. It is a book for booklovers and bookish readers. Lonn Taylor writes from the point of view of a historian who has been reading books about Texas for seventy years, since he was seven years old, and who has known many of the authors he writes about. He presents his reflections about well-known figures such as John Graves, J. Frank Dobie, and Larry McMurtry. He also introduces readers to people like folklorist C. L. Sonnichsen, who wrote about Texas feuds; Julia Lee Sinks, who interviewed early settlers of Fayette County in the 1870s; Karen Olsson, who wrote a fine novel about the mystique of Austin; and David Dorado Romo, who describes himself as the “psychogeographer of El Paso” and is the grandnephew of a saint. Some of the authors Taylor writes about are truly obscure, like Gertrude Beasley, who published her autobiography in Paris in 1924 and died in a New York insane asylum, or Tony Cano, whose self-published autobiographical novel describes what it was like to be poor and Mexican in West Texas in the 1950s. Taylor also teases out the Texas connections of writers as diverse as William Sydney Porter, Hervey Allen, and H. Allen Smith, and he writes about tracking down Texas books in London and Washington, DC, as well as at Barber’s in Fort Worth, the Brick Row Book Shop in Austin, and Rosengren’s and Brock’s in San Antonio. This is a booklover’s book.
Author: Kathleen Shafer
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 1477318313
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 207
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Book Description
This inviting book explores how small-town Marfa, Texas, has become a landmark arts destination and tourist attraction, despite--and because of--its remote location in the immense Chihuahuan desert.
Author: Harriet Isecke
Publisher: Turtleback Books
ISBN: 9780606318464
Category : Texas
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
In the 1500s, European explorers arrived in Texas in search of gold and glory. The Spanish were the first Europeans to arrive. Readers get to discover early Texas history in this fascinating nonfiction book that uses colorful images, intriguing facts
Author: R. K. Sawyer
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1623490154
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 202
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Book Description
From its earliest days of human habitation, the Texas coast was home to seemingly endless clouds of ducks, geese, swans, and shorebirds. By the 1880s Texas huntsmen, or market hunters, as they came to be called, began providing meat and plumage for the restaurant tables and millinery salons of a rapidly growing nation. A network of suppliers, packers, distribution centers, and shipping hubs efficiently handled their immense harvest. At the peak of Texas market hunting in the late 1890s, Rockport merchants shipped an average of 600 ducks a day in a five-month shooting season, and in the last year of legal market hunting, an estimated 60,000 ducks and geese were shipped from Corpus Christi alone. Market men employed efficient methods to harvest nature’s bounty. They commonly hunted at night, often using bait to concentrate large numbers of waterfowl. The effectiveness of the hunt was improved when side-by-side double barrel shotguns and large-gauge swivel guns gave way to repeating firearms, with some capable of discharging as many as eleven shells in a single volley. Their methods were so efficient that, by the late 1800s, Texas sportsmen and others blamed the alarming decline of coastal waterfowl populations on the market hunter’s occupation. In 1903, after a long fight and many failures, the first migratory bird game law passed the Texas legislature. Though the fight would continue, it was the beginning of the end of the year-round slaughter. Most market hunters quit, and those who didn’t became outlaws. In this book, R. K. Sawyer chronicles the days of market hunting along the Texas coast and the showdown between the early game wardens and those who persisted in commercial waterfowl hunting. Containing an abundance of rare historical photographs and oral history, Texas Market Hunting: Stories of Waterfowl, Game Laws, and Outlaws provides a comprehensive and colorful account of this bygone period.
Author: Sandra Magsamen
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
ISBN: 9781728243276
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 32
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Book Description
From A to Z, Texas is an amazing place to be! Children and parents alike will be delighted to see their favorite landmarks and landscapes in a book that is not only educational, but speaks to the heart. The ABCs of Texas will invite Little One's to explore their home and discover how wonderful their world is!
Author: Johnny D. Boggs
Publisher: Pinnacle Books
ISBN: 0786027835
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 315
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Book Description
An American original, the great Johnny D. Boggs weaves a Texas-sized tale of an 1880s badlands--under the grasp of a lawman gone rogue. . . In For Justice In For The Kill Between the Pecos River and Rio Grande a vast, harsh land was ruled by Texas Rangers Captain Hector Savage. Savage's motive wasn't duty, it was money; he's turned this desolate place into a bloodied, terrorized kingdom. Now, a protégé of Savage, Sergeant Dave Chance, has come with a prisoner--a big-talking murderer in his own right--shackled at his side. A decent, honest Ranger, Chance cannot stand idly by while Savage runs roughshod over the territory. Now, to save a traumatized people, he must turn his prisoner loose and give him a gun. Only their combined firepower can penetrate Savage's fortress and kill him. That is, if they don't kill each other first. . . "Johnny Boggs has produced another instant page-turner. . .don't put down the book until you finish it." --Tony Hillerman on Killstraight "Johnny D. Boggs tells a crisply powerful story that rings true more than two centuries after the bloody business was done." --The Charleston (S.C.) Post and Courier on The Despoilers "Boggs is unparalleled in evoking the gritty reality of the Old West." --The Shootist
